Queue management is a problem typically faced at grocery stores, such as with respect to fulfillment of deli orders. When a customer wishes to place an order for deli items, he/she typically must pull a ticket and remain in the vicinity of the counter until his/her number is called forward. Once the ticket number is called forward, the customer then approaches the counter to place his/her order. Once the order is placed, the customer must wait for the order to be fulfilled. This typically requires that the customer remain close to the deli counter in order to bow when the order is ready. The customer often has little understanding as to how long it will take for his/her ticket number to be called forward or how long will take the service person to fulfill his/her order. This uncertainty may be frustrating for the customer who may have other shopping to do at the store.
Most supermarkets with full-service deli departments use a manual 4“call-forward” queue-management system such as the “Turn-O-Matic” system sold by the Take-A-Number, Inc. Each customer pulls off a sequentially-numbered paper ticket from a preprinted roll in a dispenser to establish priority in a “first-come-first-served” service queue. Each ticket effectively represents a request for service by the service personnel to fulfill an order for goods, and service personnel satisfy these requests for service by “calling forward” each ticket number to be served in sequence, usually by verbally announcing the queue number and pushing a button to increment the “Now Serving” number on an overhead sign. The customer then answers the call and places the order with the service person, usually verbally, for immediate fulfillment.
More and more supermarkets are also offering customers the option of placing their deli orders through computerized ordering software via a computer, e.g. a “kiosk” computer. Each placement of an order through such computerized means is also a request for service, and the computer acts as an intermediary for the customer in actually placing the order with a service person for fulfillment, usually by printing the contents of the order on a printer behind the deli counter. In theory, the use of such computer-ordering systems should provide significant benefit by saving time, since the customers do not have to wait in line to place their orders, and also by being able to take as much time as they want to browse and order items. The retailer can benefit by reducing labor costs, since the service person does not have to take time to interact with the customer, and also by increasing sales. The increase in sales is due to several factors. Some customers will place their order through a computer who would otherwise not be willing, to wait in line. Customers are known to place larger orders through a computer than at the counter, primarily because they do not feel pressured by customers behind them in the queue to complete their order quickly and can take more time to browse and think of more items to buy.
However, managing customer-service levels using queue-management and customer-ordering systems as described above is complicated by several problems: lack of service-level performance information, especially in real time, and the fact that “counter customers” and “kiosk customers” create two separate and competing service queues. Further, other customers may place a call to the deli in order to place his/her order which creates an additional competing service queue, introducing a third competing service queue. These competing methods of placing orders and/or entering the queue create logistical problems for the employees fulfilling orders because, for example, an employee may begin fulfilling an order placed by phone and cannot provide the customer waiting at the counter with an accurate estimate as to how long it may be before his/her order is fulfilled. The result of these problems is reduced profits due to lost deli sales, higher operating costs, and diminished benefit from those computerized ordering systems.
Prior-art electronic call-forward queue-management systems, such as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,059,184 or those sold by market leader Q-Matic AB of Sweden, can provide a wealth of real-time service-level performance data. They can also provide another significant customer benefit by displaying an estimate of the queue-waiting time for a new customer joining the queue and allowing for management of multiple different service queues. However, all such prior-art systems support only one ordering channel for any given service queue and so can provide this information only for customers in that channel. In an environment with multiple ordering channels, this lack of visibility of the interaction between the various service queues becomes problematic. For example, measurement of order-fulfillment times and server-productivity, as well as estimates of queue-waiting times, will be significantly in error if the service personnel are filling orders from counter customers, kiosk customers and phone customers but the queue-management system that is performing the measurement only “knows” about the counter customers.
A much more severe problem not solved by the prior-art, single-channel queue-management systems is that of rationalizing and systematizing the service priority between the multiple channels. Since the same pool of service associates must satisfy service requests from counter customers, who are waiting in the ticketed call-forward service queue, from kiosk customers, whose orders have been printed by the deli printer, and from customers calling in orders via the phone, these parallel ordering channels create multiple separate queues that compete with each other for service. Without any systematic method of assigning relative priority of service between the service requests in the different queues, service personnel are forced to use their own best judgment in the allocation of their services. Especially during periods of peak demand, there will be a natural tendency for them to give priority to counter customers for several reasons. Counter customers are more visible, since they are standing right across the counter, whereas kiosk customers are present only in the form of paper coming out of the printer, and phone customers are also remote from the service personnel and the store itself. As queue-waiting times increase, counter customers may well become more vocal as well. Further, service personnel will likely rationalize that they can delay in filling orders from kiosk customers since those customers are shopping and do not need their orders filled as quickly and from phone customers who are not even at the store when their orders are placed.
This situation gives rise to a number of unfortunate consequences. Kiosk customers will all too often return to pick up their deli order at the conclusion of a shopping trip only to find that it has not yet been filled. Such customers will conclude correctly that they cannot rely on their kiosk order being filled and will frequently either revert back to waiting in the counter-service queue on future shopping trips or stop ordering from the deli altogether. In most cases in which the fulfillment of a deli order is so late that a customer is forced to leave the store without it, the order will have to be thrown away, resulting in waste of both the product and the labor cost of fulfillment. If a phone customer places an order and then comes to the store to pick up the order but it is not ready, he/she may not choose to order from the store again. Alternatively, the phone customer may determine that the counter-service queue is the only reliable ordering channel. On the other hand, counter customers may become offended when they see service personnel turning to fulfill orders from the printer or the phone instead of calling forward counter customers, thereby perceiving service to be unfair, perhaps even to the point of verbally criticizing the service staff for this perceived slight and/or discontinuing patronage of the deli (or even the store). The pressures of balancing service between multiple queues, using their own best judgement, places considerable stress on service personnel and degrades job satisfaction. One strategy of coping with this stress, often exhibited by the service personnel, is to sabotage the computerized ordering system in some way. For example, they may place a bag over the kiosk computer screen with “Out of Order” written on it, or disable the printer. Reducing the availability of the computerized ordering system reinforces the customers' perception that it is not a reliable ordering channel, further diminishing its benefits.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a system that allows customers to be provided with an estimate as to how long it may take for his/her order to be fulfilled when customers enter the service queue through multiple channels. It also is desirable to have a system that manages the order priority for service personnel and that measures the productivity of service personnel fulfilling orders.